This week has been a bit tedious. Now that I had reviewed the collection of books I wish to use in my online exhibit, it was time to turn the material into something that could be digitally shared. I took this past week and a half to scan the interesting pages and illustrations I had come across in my research. I used the overhead camera that is located in the reading room of Special Collections for my task, becoming quite the master scanner by the end of my work.
This is about how each book had to be arranged under the camera. For smaller editions, they could be opened completely and a whole two pages could be photographed. There was plenty of creative propping and use of paper weights in order to have pages lie just so.
Many books had pull out illustrations or charts, which proved to be one of the more challenging parts of all this (one example pictured above). Some of them could be arranged to take up the space a larger page would have needed to be scanned. But some were just a little too big to be digitized to their full potential.
I found this very interesting, especially since these pull out pages were some of my favorite discoveries as I read through my collection. These create almost a multi-media experience, forcing the reader to interact with the text a little bit. They also serve as a great example as to why electronic books will never offer as much as physical editions.
With my scanned images ready to be used, I shall soon be working on the exhibit website, the final product of this semester’s work.